Safina (Ark/Large Ship in Arabic and Kiswahili) evokes a feeling of safety through life’s perilous journey. Safina Family Services LLC (SFS), a woman-owned business, was founded by Sakera Tayabally with the advice and guidance from Dr. Saneta Maiko on October 21th, 2020 to provide critical support to new immigrants and refugees arriving in the U.S. SFS provides a range of services to help families on cultural integration, access to community resources, and support them in the general welfare by adjusting to their new home country, support their physical, emotional, social, economic, and spiritual well-being.
Many immigrants and refugees’ families face a great deal of challenges upon arrival to their new environment. Immigrants, refugees and non- English speaking children face undeniable stressors like economic hardship, poverty, acculturation difficulties and socialization, and limited or no access to basic and other needed community resources. Children from this population group often lag behind school with limited education support for them to succeed. This limits aspirations to reach and attain higher education. Because of lack of or limited English language proficiency in this population, the parents’ have challenges providing support in areas of education, connecting families to community resources, and accessing any other support systems available to them to improve and support healthy and thriving communities. This helps preserve family structure and provide tools to help parents create safe homes and healthy environment for their children.
SFS helps families and their children to adjust to their new home country and culture by providing acculturation education, identifying resources that address the emotional trauma experienced before and after arrival, physical and spiritual needs for the families so that they can strive in their community and larger society as good citizens.
SFS is focused in helping families to overcome cultural and linguistic obstacles through quality service delivery. SFS creates opportunities for families and their children to become self-sufficient, healthy and positively contribute to their communities thereby fostering a rich sense of ownership of their well-being and pride in their community and the greater society. Furthermore, we work with families and children to attain sustainable long-term solutions to achieve healthier lifestyles.